“Very!” said the handmaiden. “Couldn’t make up her mind till the very day before the wedding.”
When they had grasped the true state of affairs, and imbibed enough particulars to have filled three newspaper columns, Mrs. Widow hurried off home, and then on to the village, likewise conscious of the halo of distinction. But the handy man paused—
“I wish I’d er knowed a bit sooner,” he said, “then I’d er made an arch with ‘Welcome’ on it as large as you please. Yes, I’d er like to have had an arch. But thur,”—after a moment’s thought—“perhaps I’d better do a bit o’ weedin’ and cut the grass.”
Thus it happened that I was once again going along the road, over which they had carried me only seven months before. It was cold and cheerless then; now it was all flowers and sunshine.
The kindly, motherly soul who lives in the end house was at her gate now, watching for our coming.
“Well there! Well there!” as the wagonette stopped for me to speak to her. “I thought I should never see you again”—and she grasped my hand in her own, having first polished it on her apron, which is always fresh and spotless. “And now here you are. My dear, I’m that glad to see you back, and I do hope you’ll be happy.”
The stalwart fisherman, standing on the river bank, raised his cap—I hadn’t forgotten the good work he had done for me. Miss Jarvis at the village shop came to the door and waved her hand—I remembered the box of violets and moss and little ferns she had posted to the hospital.
In the cottage itself kind hands had been hard at work; it was simply a bower of wild flowers. The walls inside were nearly smothered with trophies of moon daisies, grasses and ferns, and the same scheme of flowers was carried all up the stairs. On the window ledge on the landing were bowls of Sweet Betsy and cow parsley—and such a pretty mixture the crimson and the white flowers made. Upstairs the rooms were gay with bowls of forget-me-nots and buttercups. Downstairs it was wild roses and honeysuckle, with mugs of red clover on the mantelpieces. Being summer, the fire-grates were at liberty, and these were filled with branches of bracken, ivy, silvery honesty seeds, and foxglove. Everything had such a delightfully “misty” effect, by reason of the seeding grasses that had been added lavishly to the flowers.
The only garden flowers in the house were some roses, in the centre of the dinner-table, sent by Miss Jarvis (with some pale green young lettuces) from her garden.